The Reluctant Protestant

John Milbank of the U. of Nottingham, will be speaking at Georgetown this October in Washington D.C.  He’s like most American theologians accept he usually writes things that are interesting.  I did not know that Georgetown’s theology Department was that with it. http://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/52331.html

I write about what I think about when I’m not writing.  Right now I’m (still) studying for the GRE while reading through Zizek’s The Desert of the Real. So I’ll attempt a Zizekian critique of the discourse operative in a segment of the exam.

Here is a brief quote from some of my prep material.  One of the prompts exam-takers respond to “will state an argument for which one or more counter-arguments could be constructed.  While the issue will be one upon which reasonable people could disagree, it will not bring up an emotionally charged religious or social issue.”  Having looked at some of these prompts (all of which are available from ETS’ website) the result of this approach is that the examinee ends up defending or attacking a position in which they are not genuinely interested in defending or attacking.  The result is an act of sophistry committed for the sake of an adequate GRE score.

What is more interesting, however, is that the methodology adopted in manufacturing GRE prompts is symptomatic of questionable presumptions that are widespread in our culture.  Why, for example, not ask people to write about an issue they are deeply invested in?  One reason, I suspect, is that “emotionally charged religious and social issues” need not be rationally explicable according to the dominant discourse. 

Do you support abortion?  O.K., whatever your answer is that is enough, you do not need a reason, this is the sort of religio-social commitment that is beyond the realm of human inter-personal reasoning according to the dominant ideology.  It’s none of my business why you think what you think about this.  I’ll vote my way, you vote your’s, and to the victor will go the legislative spoils (especially that tyranny specific to a democracy in which the ruling party is expected to disregard their fellow country-persons’ interests).  The religous fanatic running around telling everyone to believe is a popularized fanatic.  It doesn’t happen.  Rather, we all run around and tell each other to believe that we shouldn’t tell each other what to believe.

Many issues are understood to operate in this sort of Kiekegaardian realm of the unreasonable.  My favorite example is, during a televised panel interview some months back, Melissa Ethridge’s badgering of the U.S. democratic presedential candidates concerning whether or not they “believe” that science suggests that homosexuality is a “choice” or a biogically-assigned trait (the implicit correct answer, of course, being that science proves homosexuality to be biologically assigned).  Would Melissa consider it wrong, I wonder, If I were to choose to be gay even though it has not been biologically assigned to me?  What if the technology evolves such that I can choose to biologically-assign myself the homosexual gene combination?  Oh shit, we just blew up her carefully constructed ideological hiding place.  Science has not replaced “faith,” it has blinded us to it (or perhaps we have blinded ourselves to faith with science as the blind-fold).

This is why it would be inappropriate for examinees to write about something they actually care about, because everything worth talking about is precisely what we’re not allowed to talk about (i.e. “emotionally charged religious and social issues”).  Isn’t this the key to the success of people like Zizek and Milbank, they show us that at the end of the day, everything is an emotionally charged religious and social issue.  We are trained not to see this, “Go argue about false alternatives that don’t matter.”  An example of this order we all obey is the contemporary “debate” about Iraq.  Obama wants to pull the troops out, is this as admirable as it sounds, a real alternative to the policies of Bush?  For Obama and the Democrats, is the problem that we invaded Iraq or is the problem that Iraq was an especially stupid application of America’s post-WWII foreign policy of world domination in the interest of American “vital interests”?  The latter is the real problem, but no one who is allowed to speak to everyone is allowed to make that point.  What is the Democrat’s main criticism of the Iraq War?  Not that is was wrong, the criticism is that it did not work (the country is in chaos, Iran is stronger, etc. …). 

Indeed, the existence and dominance of something like the GRE (i.e. an excercize in utterly insubstantial knowledge) is perhaps the most acute testimony to the reality that we are only allowed to think about things that are ultimately not worth thinking about.  

Expiate- to talk at length

Largess- Generous Giving

2xy-4y=32 x>1 y=_

  This is what I do all ____ing day: excercises in memorization and formal operations designed to be utterly divorced from any movement toward God, the Good, or anything other than the self-aggrandizing motives of isolated Americans (or want-to-be Americans).  This is studying for the GRE, and its bull shit.  No wonder our society is incapable of imagining any actually social project.  We cannot get together for anything.  We can’t even get together to murder people who aren’t white anymore, Americans have always believed in the death of the Other! What’s happening to us?  The current aggressions in Iraq and Afghanistan are designed to be ignored by the average American.

In other words, its better that we don’t believe anything anymore, then we’re contollable.  We’ll be too neurotic to give the government any trouble.  We’ll be too worried about the market, the terrorist, the Mexican, the GRE!  Human life becomes one neurotic episode not unlike the life of someone who is obsessed with masturbation.

In the recent election news there’s been a good deal of talk about the “American Dream.”  I don’t know what that dream used to be but it’s plainly nothing but individuals gaining wealth today.  This is precisely the end of any social project that can be socially understood as a social project.  This notion of the American Dream says, “We as a society, are committed to functioning as individuals in competition with each other over an increasingly limited amount of rescources.”  Or, if you like, “We as a society are committed to isolating ourselves such that we are oblivious to our status as a society” and thus hand over social control to people who no longer need to worry about the power of the people, there are no more people, there are just isolated, neurotic persons.  Obama is not an exception here.  His only concrete notions of a social good relavent to all Americans seems to be the securing of American “vital interests,” which is of course a very slippery slope.

But I gave up on America a while back, it’s time for churches to give their members reasons to live that can be translated into large social projects.  We do this to some extent, but it has to get kicked up several notches.  As someone in a Seminary, I think those training to go into ministry often understand their vocations as concerned with a larger social good (appropriately understood as an extension of their service to God).  Churches must extend this perspective such that the average member (who may be a carpenter, a factory worker, a nurse, etc…) may come to understand their operation within society as movement toward the material realization of an improved society oriented toward God, moving people (and creation, in a different way) toward participation in the life of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  This is the only way toward social resistance against the capitalist global economia.

What follows is an excerpt of a paper I wrote this semester. The paper advocated a sort of post-Augustinian interpretation of Genesis 1. This is a tangent I got off on for a couple of pages (but luckily my prof. liked it). As a short bit of context, Emmanuel (my Seminary) is firmly committed to the biblical critical project. As a student, one may leave without an appreciation for historic and systematic theology, but nobody leaves without a relatively firm grasp on how to be a biblical critic (even those who don’t finish). As my appreciation of systematics has grown I’ve become more and more hostile to biblical criticism since I’m surrounded by it. I’ll go with it to the degree it raises many needed correctives, but its time to move beyond its epistemic short-sightedness. Anyway, here’s the excerpt:

The biblical-critical claim that a text’s semantic horizon is utterly limited by those meanings determined to be socially and historically possible is methodologically inadequate and anachronistic. This presumption is methodologically inadequate because it actively prohibits a text from truly being comprehended. A reading of a text’s total meaning is attempted in light of merely a part of the tradition the text was composed to participate in (the material and social conditions contemporary to the text’s composition). As Brevard Childs and Stanley Hauerwas have noted, all biblical texts were composed in order to look outside their immediate context insofar as they seek to be intelligible to a tradition that is presumed to develop in unexpected ways in the future. Thus, the biblical critical presumption that “original meaning” is totally determined by those conditions contemporary to composition simply cannot do justice to the very raison de etre of every text in the Bible: to participate in a tradition that has not yet ended. In other words, of every text’s “original meaning” it can be said that, originally, the text was not understood to yet be totally meaningful.

This methodologically inadequate presumption, which has always been the inherent guiding principle of the biblical-critical project, is also anachronistic. It is such because the presumption that a text was composed as though its meaning is complete and finally relevant upon composition is precisely the manner in which biblical critics read and write the literature of their own guild. Even articles and shorter monographs that do not presume to exhaust all there is worth knowing about a particular text still imagine to be finally relevant to the discussion totally in terms of a piece’s meaning as intended by the author. They read the Bible, in turn, as if its authors possessed the same expectations. Given that the biblical critical project was not a discursive possibility until the rise of modernity, this transference of its standards of possible meanings renders biblical criticism hopelessly anachronistic.

All this is not to say that because the biblical authors wrote within a tradition they expected to change and progress we are justified in reading “their” texts in light of the progressed tradition. To argue such would be methodologically flawed in the same manner as biblical criticism. Christians justifiably read Scripture in light of the tradition because this tradition, properly understood, is the ultimate arbiter of meaning.

Indeed, could one not argue that as Christians we have never argued that our reading is legitimate insofar as it “fits in” with the readings of the past? Haven’t we been much more bold than this? We have argued, it seems, that the world-view of orthodox Christianity subsumes and perfects all it comes into contact with: discarding what is wrong and completing what is right. The boldness of the Christian claim thus disarms biblical critical insights as not so much a new interpretation of the facts as an objection to the legitimacy of reorienting everything in light of Christ.

   Due to a change in my academic plans, a few months back I collected materials for the GRE, frantically studied for a bit less than a month, and then stopped all-together, having never taken the test.  Now that things are more settled in my life and academic plans/hopes I have begun to study again at a more regular pace, with around five months to go until I’m finished with the dreaded thing.  The result of all of this is that I have had much time to gain an impression of the test, a few of these thoughts are perhaps interesting enough to offer here:

1) Non-Americans, on the whole, seem to take the thing much more seriously than we in the States do (at least students from India and Korea).  Some of this is certainly due to English not being their first language but the difference is so drastic as to point to the very different cultures they are coming out of, which apparently take education far more seriosuly than we lazy Americans.  For example, the average American advice for the test runs something liek this: memorize 50 or so words, do a bit of work in a Kaplan book, take the on-line practice tests from ETS and you’ve prepared to the degree that is possible.  The average Indian advice runs something like this: clear out four to six hours a day for five or six months, (if you can) pay a load of cash for a class or tutor, memorize 4-6 thousand words and pray you do well on test day.  I’d put myself somewhere between the two extremes, not because I’m less lazy than my fellow countrypersons but because I had a real job for the past year and I now fear what could happen to me if I ever have to leave academia again.  Like all good Americans, I have been habituated to function most efficiently when motivated by fear.

2)  As most of the books say in their introductions’, the test is “crackable.”  It’s learnable.  To relate it to class-work, it’s more like studying for a difficult language exam than writing a difficult paper.  With a hard language test coming up, there are twenty different things I could be studying relative to the test so I never get “stuck” because there’s always more to do.  If I’m studying enough, I’ll go back over a topic a day or two later and find myself satisfied that I obviously made some progress the last time Ireviewed it.  A good paper, however, is usually the result of at least three or four cumulative hours of staring at the screen and usually at least one major re-write (not to mention the hours of actually productive work).  Like a huge language exam, if you can get enough material in front of you (try esnips.com for this) you can keep yourself busy with the small stuff for hours and then a few days later notice that you’ve made some substantial progress.

3) The test is a sort of crystallization of all that is so frightening about capitalist epistemology.  With the exception of the role vocab knowledge plays in the test (which is substantial) the whole thing is designed so that it does not matter what you know, it matters how you know.  Efficient and quick formal operation is the name of the game.  Evil geniuses could one day rule the world via stellar performance on the GRE (that is if they don’t already).  Knowledge as participation in divine enlightenment?  Save it for your term paper champ, ETS is as concerned with the advancement of future Enron execs as it is with upstanding public servants. 

      In fact, I kind of feel silly writing “upstanding public servants” because we don’t expect them to be that way anymore, we don’t expect anyone to be that way really.  We’re not trained (or tested) to.  

I do a fair amount of searching on the internet for info regarding Radical Orthodoxy, largely because I’m trying to find doctoral programs in the U.S. that are amenable to the project. In so doing I regularly come across blog entries with the above title: what’s so radical about Radical Orthodoxy? These entries then detail three are four points, one of which is always RO’s resistance to bifurcative thinking.

Relative to these entries, it will perhaps be more helpful to identify the kernel of the movement that in fact makes it radical. In this vein, a lengthy quote from Rowan William’s Arius will prove relevant. Here Williams makes use of Fabian’s Time and Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object. Describing Fabian’s argument, WIlliams writes:

[T]he creation and imposition of ‘normative’ time [in western academic anthropology] is a device for avoiding the relativation of one’s own position (and thus the possibility of change): because – surely – our past is decisively and undeniably notwhere we now stand, what can be relegated to the past is not to be listened to seriously. Against this, Fabian asserts: “Tradition and modernity are not ‘opposed’ (except semiotically) … What are opposed … are not the same societies at different stages of development, but different societies facing each other at the same time.”

This seems to have substantial bearing on Milbank’s entire approach in Theology and Social Theory and thus RO as a whole. Milbank begins the piece by describing creation’s current locus as the saeculeum, not a stable “sphere” capable of sustaining meaning, but as the (temporary) period after the incarnation and beforethe eschaton, that is, as a basically relative reality insofar as it is only adequately recognized in its relation to the activity of God.

Furthermore, for Milbank and company the contemporary moment is not only historically relative to God, it is metaphysically relative to God. Since all that is is via its participation in God, all being is necessarily oriented to God, morally, spiritually, and in any other way one can think of. We are always answerable to God because we exist in God and were created in order that we might participate in the divine life of the Blessed Trinity.

Indeed, what some find so offensive, crass, and naïve in Milbank’s approach is not unlike that which horrifies the popular culture in the less sophisticated rhetoric of some conservative Evangelical preachers (at least here in the States). Their beliefs that God functions as the efficient cause of natural disasters and wars in response to social sin are ridiculous in the public discourse precisely because they construe grave, sacred events (9/ll, Hurricane Katrina, etc. …) as relative to the will of God. This horrifies liberal society because within the popular discourse events like 9/11 (or at least the orthodox understanding of such events) actually constitute and limit the social discourse. That is, they are the relativizers, not the relativizees. To involve these events in our being answerable to God is to misunderstand the cosmic pecking order as determined by liberal society. 9/11, for example, may tell us who God is (American, angry at terrorists, etc…) but God will certainly not tell us what 9/11 was.

I will utilize two recent cases sensationalized by the American media to hopefully illustrate what I would like to convey (in an admittedly roundabout way). The authorities of the state of Texas recently seized somewhere around 400 children from a conservative sect that understand themselves to be the true embodiment of the Mormon religion. Various arguments were constructed for the removal of these children from their homes, all referencing their being in grave danger of child abuse, however, the arguments were so thin and their methods so illegal that two Texas courts ordered the return of the children a day or two back.

I am no fan of Mormonism or polygamy, and statistically it seems hard to believe that some of the relevant children have not suffered from abuse of some kind or another, but my point in bringing up this example is its relation to something I saw on TV the same night I was watching the “Polygamy story” unfold (at least his is how it was characterized by CNN). On MTV’s Real World a young woman proceeded to perform oral sex on a fellow house-mate and then tell her boyfriend (also a housemate) that the entire event had never occurred (it would be a bit absurd to assume she and her boyfriend were not also sexually involved). Is this illegal? No, actually it is entertainment. Much of the sexual encounter was shown on TV (blurred a bit) and who knows how many thousands of people around the world did not blink an eye.

Relative to the polygamy debacle this made me think: what about swingers? Is what they do legal? What if they swing with regular partners, that is, they have sex with multiple adults on a regular basis (much like the polygamist male)?

This is of course all a bunch of moralizing silliness within the dominant discourse. Polygamy is disgusting and dangerous. Don’t ask why. It just is. That’s why there are laws against it. Swinging may be a bit eccentric but its not a social evil worthy of legislative action. Were I wealthy enough to be a gambler I would wager a hefty sum that any news commentator on any of the popular American cable new outlets (CNN, Fox, MSNBC, etc…) who raised a single of the above issues would at best receive a prompt warning from her network and colleagues and at worst find herself unemplyed. The entire matter cannot be discussed. The standards of liberal society’s discourse, however arbitrary to the unititiated, cannot be criticized because no one is allowed to admit that they exist (I believe Hauerwas calls this an “especially pernicious” quality of liberalism). This enables a sort of thorough tyranny that is only possible when a matter is not allowed to be discussed, only decided upon unanimously.

Secondly, and more obviously relevant to the point raised above by Rowan Williams, is Barak Obama’s just-announced withdrawal of membership from Trinity United Methodist Church in Chicago, Illinois. Of course, the entire event began when clips of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright were played repeatedly by the American Media. The most notorious of these clips showed a frantic Wright screaming into a microphone “God Damn America! God Damn America etc…”

For those who actually listen to more substantial segments of the sermon at issue something will become immediately clear. There is a sharp divide between the American narrative as told by Rev. Wright and that told (and believed) by most Americans. This divide is not adequately understood by a simple comparison of the sentiments involved in pronouncing America’s damnation versus its blessedness.

Rather, Wright operates on the presumption that America is actually answerable to God. Events that the rest of the society never understood (or quickly forgot) thus register as significant signs of America’s character for Wright. Immediately before the “God Damn America” clip, for example, Wright provides a litany of American abuses, the vast majority of which are simply part of the historical record (our support of tyrannies throughout S. America, our bombing of civilians in S. America and the Middle East, our military support of the murderous Israeli IDF, etc. … . Now of course one would want to add our bombing of Afghan and Iraqi civilians and especially our use of chemical weapons in Fallujah). If America is in fact not answerable to God then these events do not matter: those to whom they did/do necessarily matter are either dead, dying, or otherwised silenced and they have worked out well as means to secure American “vital interests” (with the likely exception of the current Iraq war). If America is answerable to God, however, these events cannot be so quickly forgotten. If American people are oriented toward God in the very constitution of our being, if all powers function properly only when seeking the good of all of creation, then the severity and regularity of American cruelty is frighteningly significant. Indeed, if all of this is true and one finds oneself preaching in the prophets on a given Sunday, “God Damn America” seems to be a rather fitting refrain.

Returning to Williams and Milbank, the crime RO commits (alongside West Virginia evangelicals and elite urbanites like Rev. Wright) is that it refuses to avoid the relativization of the contemporary moment in relation to the historical and metaphysical orientation of all reality to God. This is what makes it radical, all else stems from this needed move.

OK, my good intentions to blog again several months ago were fruitless (a phenomenon I’ve become accustomed to in my life) but I’m going to try again, this time I’ll begin with an actually substantial post rather than a triumphant announcement of intentions:  One runs into many instances of the term “rhetorical violence” these days and I think it ought to be parsed.  If usage determines meaning than most often the term seems to mean something like “illegitimate rhetorical advantage.”  That is, one has performed the discursive act (speech, written letter, etc…) such that it can function as truth (i.e. influence others) when it ought not do so.  The simplest example here would be screaming.  As the oldest of five brothers I perfected the art of screaming stupid things to other people in such a way that they had to listen to me, even though I was quite often saying things that did not deserve to be listened to.  The performance of such an act of “rhetorical violence” seeks to be recognized as truth even as the speaker knows it is not truth.  Rhetorical violence of this sort works because actual truth is listened to by all people due to our being made in the image of God.

   If one does not mean “illegitimate rhetorical advantage” when one speaks of “rhetorical violence” than the concept seems to be untenable (at least as a criticism) for all those who are not pacifists.  To cite categorically some examples I’ve run into frequently in recent days (which probably motivated me to write this): the Christian claim to ultimate universal relevance (i.e. the orthodox gospel is true and applicable to the entirety of creation) is not (necessarily) rhetorically violent in the above sense, simply becaue it argues its point such that its methodology suggests no validity that is not already assumed in the actual message itself.  To give an example of what I’m saying, its not rhetorically violent (given the above sense) for a missionary to go to some locale and preach to un-Christians because the belief that un-Christians ought to be preached to is inherent to the gospel being preached.  If that missionary were Doestoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor (who does not believe the gospel and proclaims it as a means to maintain his/her own social power), however, the proclamation of the gospel to un-Christians would in fact be rhetorically violent.

    Now that I’ve belabored that point to death let me wrap this up with a brief elaboration of my above comment pertaining to rhetorical violence and pacifism.  Only pacifists can coherently say that the above missionary example is in fact an instance of rhetorical violence because only pacifists can coherently say that any instance of force (rhetorical force or otherwise) is de facto innaproppriate to human interaction.  Furthermore, this hypothetical pacifist would need to be a hardcore convert, a straithup kick-my-Grandmother’s-ass-and-take-her-money pacifist, no compromises, because of all instances of violence we must admit that the rhetorical variety is on the less drastic side of the spectrum. 

So what we’ve really got here is a deconstruction of Christian pacifism.  If one wants to actually be a pacifist, and one finds forcefel language that purposes to persuade to be distasteful (which seems to be the only lexically responsible way to understand the rhetorical violence everyone finds so offensive), one must include any as an instance of rhetorical violence any claim to truth that seeks to be recognized by other people who don’t want to hear it.  Want to speak truth to power?  That’s rhetorical violence my friend, you’ve attempted a mastery over the thoughts and actions of the power-holders that they do not want you to have.  Given this understanding of rhetorical violence (which only the pacifist can coherently hold to) there is no more violent instance of rhetoric than the act of Christian conversion, confession and baptism.  Even this, however, is no more rhetorically violent than is the claim that Christian conversion is rhetorically violent (since this is also a truth claim).  Let the infinite digression begin!  Pacifists, it seems, cannot make truth claims to other people who don’t want to hear them and still be pacifists.

  Since most people aren’t pacifists, the point here is simple.  One can’t coherently criticize a statement for actually being rhetorically violent (and if one means that a statement takes an illigitemate rhetorical advantage perhaps it ought to be characterized with this language instead because it is more precise).  What the non-pacifist ought to do instead is attempt to align her thoughts and words with truth such that the instances of rhetorical violence commited will be worthwhile and just. 

I’m not a Catholic (hence the name of this blog) but I’m married to one and I have much respect for the Catholic Church.  I have no respect for Time magazine because it is a worthless source of news.  Nevertheless, it was the only reading material I could find this morning without getting of the couch so I proceeded to read a short essay in the July 30, 2007 issue that sums up quite nicely one of the most significant problems faced by American Catholicism and Western Christianity as a whole.

To sum it up, in light of Pope Benedict’s recent easing of the restrictions on the Latin Mass, Lisa Takeuchi Cullen encouraged her fellow Catholics to push for the practice of the Mass in Latin because she is tired of bad homilies she can understand.  They are bad because they employ trite rhetorical techniques and presume the authority to tell her how Christians ought to feel regarding political issues.  Lisa just wants to do the important stuff like take the Eucharist, when her busy schedule allows her to attend.  The depth of her faliure to comprehend Christianity in any deep sense is perhaps best evident when she discusses “Catholocism the religion” as distinct from “Catholocism the faith,” followed by all the reasons she gets personally fulfilled by attending Mass, when and if she goes.

I’ll abstain from further deriding a theologically-stupid essay on theological matters because that’s not what I sat down to write about.  I sat down to wonder aloud why on earth Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, a Catholic who goes to gym class instead of Mass, is writing about Catholocism in Time magazine.  This is of course quite common.  Besides a few op-eds by David Bentley Hart in the Wall Street Journal and the occasional one-liner from Neuhaus in a major newspaper I am unaware of a major U.S. media outlet, print or otherwise, that gives space for the explication of theological matters by an actual professional theologian.  This trend is unique to theological matters.  You will never hear about Presidential Politics on CNN from some guy who hasn’t cast a vote in twenty years but just really enjoys the feeling he gets when he bitches about candidates he doesn’t like.  Likewise, you won’t here about the latest trend in medical research from Fox News’ marketing intern.

The reason Lisa Takeuchi Cullen is writing about Catholocism in Time Magazine is that many Americans who are sympathetic to Christianity understand it as an opportunity for therapeutic self-expression and they can probably identify with what she wrote.  The problem with understanding any religion as distinct and well-defined as Catholic Christianity as primarily an avenue for free self-expression is that this blinds one to the reality that in interacting woth or participating in the Catholic Church one is dealing an historically developed set of relatively fixed practices and doctrines (but one wouldn’t want to waste time trying to figure out where the practices end and the doctrines begin).  I do not want to suggest that Lisa Cullen or anyone else should not be able to discuss their faith and express that faith.  I am suggesting that they should take the Church’s faith seriously enough to deal with, at least when they are at Mass, because the Catholic Church does have a well-defined faith that has been developed at the expense of countless lifetimes of prayer, sacrifice and hard work.  You don’t have to accept this faith, I’m not Catholic, I don’t accept it at this point in my life.  But I respect it enough not to be blind to the fact its bigger than me.  One aspect of this is that, as a non-Catholic, I do not receive the Elements when I go to Mass. 

What is at stake here is maintaining the possibility for real discourse between Christians about Christianity.  If Lisa (an admittedly unfaithful Catholic) my Wife (a faithful Catholic) and myself (not even a Catholic at all) were to all partake of the Elements as an act of personal expression we impeed any real engagement with the objective Catholic faith, the triune God this faith purports to draw humanity into, and each other regarding that faith.  There are so many things Christians need to work out, ecumenical issues, social stances, etc… but the basis to all of this as to be the possibility of actually Christian discourse.  By confusing spiritual forms of free self-expression with the performance of Christian practices in a faithful manner such discourse becomes gradually less likely to occur and this is a shame.

OK, I kind of fell of the face of the earth for a really long time but I’ve been busy.  I stopped trying to move to England to go for a Master’s at the University of Nottingham because  its too darn expensive (due in large part to the treachorous exchange rate the U.S. dollar is experiencing) and I’m going back to Emmanuel in Tennessee to finish up there.  If you’ve never heard of Emmanuel it’s a splendid little school in Johnson City, Tennessee.  I loved my first year and-a-half there and I’m glad I’ll be able to finish up there as well.  I’m still going to go for Nottingham after i finish with the M.Div. but I’m also preparing for the GRE since American schools are sadly a more realistic option as far as familial relocation goes.  If you are studying for the GRE don’t buy anything! Go to www.esnips.com and get it for free.  I just found it this week after wasting fifty or so bucks on books.  Search especially for the “GRE Big Book” and “Nova.”  They are both high quality.  SO anyway, if I find anything worst posting it’ll be here.

But just as a river, produced from a well, is not separate, and yet there are in fact two visible objects and two names. For neither is the Father the Son, nor the Son the Father. For the Father is Father of the Son, and the Son, Son of the Father. For like as the well is not a river, nor the river a well, but both are one and the same water which is conveyed in a channel from the well to the river, so the Father’s deity passes into the Son without flow and without division.

-St. Athanasius